A question as old as time, I know.

I’m getting away from Google and I’ve done the easy stuff: CoMaps, Proton mail (I know, not the best move), aveslibre, etc. I currently don’t have the time (or the knowledge base) to learn how to self host, but hopefully that will replace Drive and such in the future.

But I digress. I’m looking at a new OS for my phone. I’m currently in a contract with a phone that is incompatible with alternative OSs. Graphene needs a Pixel. Used, they’re $150-400. /e/OS will run on a Motorola or whatever and those are like $80.

There’s also the option of going full Fairphone with /e/os and I like that idea in the future.

The internet people tell me that Graphene is the best due to ease of installation, privacy, and security.

I don’t need a lot of security. I just want Google to stop suckling all that sweet, sweet data from my teat.

What are your thoughts?

  • TheDarkQuark@lemmy.world
    27·
    3 days ago

    I came to GrapheneOS for privacy and security, but stayed for the features.

    1. Per application network toggle: I found this incredibly useful in cases where the application is fully functional without internet, yet still asks for internet permission, and I do not want it to phone home (e.g. Google Photos). It is helpful for when you are using a VPN, and do not want the slot to be taken by an application like NetGuard. Although, I believe you can replicate this functionality with (Split Tunneling) + (Block connections without VPN).

    2. Storage Scopes: This is a another highly useful feature. Say you took a bunch of pictures on a trip, and want to show the pictures to a friend. Normally, you’d fear them snooping around pictures that you don’t want to show them. However, with GrapheneOS, you can just download a separate Gallery application, only expose the photos (or the photo directory) that you want to show via Storage Scopes, pin the application, and safely hand the phone over to them.

    I found this feature very helpful when shortlisting ~10 photos from a gallery of 500 photos. I downloaded PhotoSwooper (which lets you keep/delete photos by swiping right/left) from F-Droid, exposed the 500 photos directory to it, and started swiping. I iterated this a couple of times, and got my perfect 10.

    1. Contact Scopes: This is for the cases when you don’t want to expose your contacts to the application for whatever reason (e.g. you don’t want them to graph your connections or you just want to protect the privacy of your friends). You can just selectively share contact(s) instead of handing your entire phonebook to the application.

    2. Sandboxed Google Play: Some applications require the extremely invasive Google Play Services (because it operates with elevated system-level privileges). However, with GrapheneOS, you can just install the sandboxed play services, which acts as a regular user level application. You can then revoke network access within Sandboxed Google Play Services, and use your play services dependant application as usual.

    So, basically, if you can afford it, go for GrapheneOS. I wanted privacy and security; but now that I tried GrapheneOS’s features, a lot of these are now nonnegotiable to me.

    • Imhotep@lemmy.world
      3·
      1 day ago

      On Graphene now, I dearly miss simple Lineage features I used 10 times a day: the network speed indicator and long press power button for flashlight. I just assumed GOS would have them.

      I browsed the forums and they’re not interested in implementing it. One answer was “buy a flashlight”

      Even after a few months I still feel like going back.

      • TheDarkQuark@lemmy.world
        3·
        1 day ago

        I personally do not use long press power for flashlight, but your requirement got me curious, and I tried to replicate it.

        This is doable, but seems to require more permissions. I downloaded KeyMapper from F-Droid (https://f-droid.org/packages/io.github.sds100.keymapper/), and added a new key map with Long press Power trigger and Toggle flashlight action. However, this application requires Accessibility permissions (because you are overriding system maps ig), Camera (for flashlight), Network (I think it sends an adb command via wireless debugging to do the toggle) and unrestricted battery usage.

        As for the speed data, from a surface level search, I found these two apps:

        1. NetUpDown (https://apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid/index/apk/com.by_syk.netupdown): This shows a floating window (instead of the notifications bar) with the network speed.

        2. Traffic Light (https://f-droid.org/packages/com.leekleak.trafficlight/): This displays the network speed as a notification, but shows the incorrect data for me for some reason.

        Theoretically, it should be possible to just mash the functionality (/code) of these two to get what you want (thanks to open source).

        • Imhotep@lemmy.world
          2·
          20 hours ago

          A big thanks for doing all that research!

          I had kind of a fix for the flashlight, but this is much better. KeyMapper is really polished, the icon doesn’t do it justice (I’m superficial like that).
          I could customize the press duration, vibration, all good stuff. Only thing missing is a timeout.
          I did have a bit of a weird behavior, with actions sometimes launched during button press and sometimes only after release. It seems to be fixed for now. For other users: I did grant root to the app but don’t know if it was required for this function.

          Traffic Light is again a well made app, but it updates too often and I don’t like persistent app notification in the drop down window. I’ll give it a try though.

    • manuel2258@lemy.lolEnglish
      4·
      3 days ago

      I wondered, is the per application network toggle grapheneOS specific? I also recently discovered it and its so nice. Was a bit shocked when I red some indications online that its not a normal android feature?